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Yakuza Wiki talk:Manual of Style
Great job on the style guide. Just a couple of suggestions you can take on board if you wish. Firstly, the reason we use family name first for Ishin and Kenzan is not because they are Japan-exclusive games, but because they are historic characters. This is also the reason we use macrons for these characters. Check out the first line of this section of the Wikipedia article on Japanese names to see what I'm getting at. Obviously the definition of a "historic" person is open to debate and changes as time goes on, but I think we can safely say that Ishin and Kenzan count as historic characters, whereas all characters from the modern-day Yakuza games count as "living or recently deceased." Obviously we need to avoid links with macrons for the reasons you stated, but I think it should be encouraged to use macrons in the general formatting for historic characters, as this is how you are supposed to write these names in English. Another formatting point is that you reverted my use of italics for haori, so I am assuming that you do not wish for people to italicize Japanese loanwords; you might want to make a point about that. I'm glad we're going with UK English since I'm from Brexitland myself. It might be helpful to point out though that the obvious exception to the -ue rule is with the PlayStation's Analog sticks, as this is a proper noun. I would also suggest that the use of -ize rather than -ise, as well as the usage of the Oxford comma are both preferred. And the other thing is that, in my view, store descriptions should be transcribed verbatim, with the usage of sic for any glaring grammatical errors. Also, Japanese item names/descriptions on store/eatery/bar item tables are unnecessary for an English-language wiki and should not be included. Speaking of store pages, I think any time there are multiple locations in the same game, item tables should be put into a tabber with the different locations to save space on the page. With categorization, I think your usage of "characters that are in the yakuza" is a little confusing: I would suggest you perhaps change it to "characters who are actual yakuza gang members" or similar to avoid confusion between that and the Yakuza series itself. When it comes to table of contents, I think __TOC__ should be used for any pages where the infobox may force an item table to be narrowed otherwise. As for other stuff, I think we should perhaps consider notability for pages like on Wikipedia. I don't think it's necessary to have an individual page for every item in the game for example. I think rather than having a page for Staminan X, Staminan XX, Staminan Royale etc we can just group these into Staminan, with redirects for each item. That way, typing in Staminan X for example will lead to it displaying the Staminan page. I've already taken the liberty of doing something similar for Suntory BOSS Coffee. The other thing is pages for streets. I don't think it's necessary to separate streets, squares, alleys etc into "East," "North," "NW" and so on even if that's how they appear in the game. Well that's my view. I won't edit the style guide myself, but rather leave it up to you whether you want to take any of these suggestions on board. Eddiehimself (talk) 12:18, July 12, 2019 (UTC) Just another thing. I would like people to make sure their image filenames are distinguishing and relevant. Having random filenames that don't really describe the picture can end up with duplicates being uploaded due to not showing up in image searches, and having filenames that are too general like "goromajima.jpg" for example are likely to result in filename conflicts.Eddiehimself (talk) 12:52, July 12, 2019 (UTC) Re: Response to above The reason I have specified Japan exclusive games as opposed to historical figures is because of the Kurohyou games. I'm not going to touch those item pages or location pages with a ten-foot pole, I suggest you discuss that with LammyQ and Wagnike2, as they are the leading authorities there. My specialties lie with character pages, which I believe I've sufficiently covered. I'm not concerned with following whatever format that Wikipedia does, as such this style guide will override anything stated. As of right now, Okita Souji's page is the best template for all things Ishin!, and I'd like to keep all Ishin pages as close to his as possible. Haori does not need to be italicized, as it is a specific garment. Aniki and any other lesser-known loan words would preferably have links to assist in defining these words for readers. We're working on setting up a small dictionary. I'm not all that concerned about US/UK English discrepancies, as I am fully aware that it's difficult to be aware of this while typing or editing articles and the two are bound to be used in tandem. My only concern is making sure that the correct in-game terms are used (Theater Square). I'm Canadian myself, so I use a mix of both US English and UK English. We haven't created pages for each of the streets as of right now, but I do think it's important as it would help to have a page for each segment of the street with businesses listed. I don't see a problem with having more than one page. The style guide still definitely needs refining, but there are a lot of very specific, common sense bordering things that I believe should be touched on once they come up, rather than having it in the style guide and padding it out. Italicizing loan words isn't a common occurrence per-page and I don't think there's any harm in having Japanese names for businesses/minigames/anything other than character pages. Especially since most businesses have the kana on the signs above the doors and it may be helpful (or interesting) to some readers. This guide is definitely a work in progress, and it will be updated as we see fit. I've yet to gather Cawfein's thoughts, so it's definitely subject to change as of right now. Foxxick (talk) 17:41, July 12, 2019 (UTC) Thanks for your response. when it comes to the Black Panther games, I think it would still be better to use the style for modern names since this is an English-language wiki. And I think you have perhaps misunderstood what I was saying about the item pages. I'm all for business names themselves having the Japanese names listed. What I meant was that there have been cases of the actual items listed in store item/menu tables (like Smile Burger) being in Japanese. I found this a little bit annoying because there is only so much width on a table. So filling it out with a column for a Japanese item name that the reader is never going to see on the order menu in the Western version of the game to me seems a little pointless. Hope this clears up what I meant. I shall have to inquire with the other people about item pages and such. Eddiehimself (talk) 17:53, July 12, 2019 (UTC) Tense in Biography Sections while i definitely agree most of the wiki should be written in present tense, this goes against the entire purpose of the biography sections, which impacts clarity. these sections exist to recount events further into, y'know, the past, beyond what the player can see unfold in real time in-game. that's why that information's even in a separate section rather just being a part of the game recaps. the benefits of writing about events that occurred in the past in the present tense (a sense of excitement or intensity) aren't really necessitated by the tone of this wiki and don't outweigh the issues. additionally, writing in past tense for those sections is so natural that many of the existing biography sections i've seen are already written that way, or they start off in past tense and continue in present tense, which reads... weirdly. in addition to that addition, writing biography sections in past tense and everything else in the present also fits better with how the games themselves present this information. like with ALL of the wiki-wide changes i've been making, i don't make these changes lightly and i understand perfectly well how much work needs to be done in order to accommodate them, which is the main problem i'm seeing with this right now. i still think they're to the benefit of the wiki and i'm willing to rewrite every single biography section myself if that's what i gotta do. i'd hope my track record so far shows that i'm serious about that. GOROMI (talk) 06:49, July 30, 2019 (UTC) Totally agree. The Fictional Present tense is only necessary for events that unfold during gameplay. Anything that does not happen during the actual course of the game (including events that take place between one game and another) should be placed in the corresponding article's Biography or History section (for locations), and written in the past tense. There are caveats to this of course. For example, I've included the 2015 flashback in the Judgment section of the ADDC page because of the fact that it actually appears as an interactive scene in the game. And I suppose people might find it a bit confusing going all the way from 1980 to 2016 for some characters before the game headings. Maybe in this case we could make it a bit more pedagogical by including sub-headings like "early life," "1988-2005," etc. But yeah, overall, anything that does not take place during a game should be written in the Biography/History header and in past tense. Speaking of the History heading, the one for Purgatory currently has a brief description of what the location looks like and what purpose it serves. I feel like the information is quite pertinent and could be useful, but it doesn't really go in the History section, and I think it's too much to include in the lead section. Maybe we could include a "Description" heading for locations, to give people a more in-depth idea of what the place is like? In the same way we have "Appearance" and "Personality" headings for characters, I suppose the "Description" would be like the "appearance" and "personality" of a location, as it were. Eddiehimself (talk) 10:55, July 30, 2019 (UTC)